The FCC’s Incentive Auction: Lessons Learned

The Columbia Institute for Tele-Information will be hosting an online conference on Thursday, October 12th 201, at 3:30 PM. This conference, being organized by CITI Associate David Salant, will focus on examining the effectiveness of the FCC’s recent Incentive Auction on Spectrum Allocation

The Incentive Auction was the most complex spectrum auction ever conducted. It successively cleared 84 MHz of TV spectrum and re-allocated 70 MHz for mobile services. However, it also took approximately 4 years to design, and the bidding lasted for one year. Repacking of the cleared spectrum will take over 39 months before the spectrum will become fully available for the winning bidders. This means that the entire process will have taken over 8 years to complete.

This conference addresses how well the auction achieved its policy goals. It asks the questions, What, if anything, may be improved? Should the FCC or other countries try to run two sided auctions again to clear spectrum?

Agenda

3:30-3:45pm Eli Noam, Paul Garrett Chair in Public Policy and Business Responsibility at Columbia University and David Salant, Visiting Professor Toulouse School of Economics

3:45-4:10pm Jon Peha, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University

4:10-4:35pm Greg Rosston, Director of the Public Policy Program at Stanford University; Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research; Professor of Economics at Stanford

4:35-5:00pm David Salant,Visiting Professor Toulouse School of Economics “Auctions for Essential Inputs”